Gamertags and Online ID’s
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You do realize that Steam doesn’t do physical copies of games, and it’s ALL digital content, right?
If you buy the physical disc copy of any Steamed game (Skyrim, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, and more) and put it into the disc drive, the first thing it’ll do is to open Steam. If Steam is not there then it will install Steam and ask you to go online and create an account. Once done that, then you can install the game and do a Steam online-check with it (since Valve apparently wants to know when you bought a Steam-related game) and then you can play the game and go offline mode.
And yes, the disc versions REQUIRES Steam and all the useless crap that comes with it.
Note: I’ve seen the case for Skyrim PC version and it does says on the front “Requires an Internet Connection” and it also has the Steam symbol on it.
Also Offline Mode.The requirements are still there for game installations. You still NEED internet and still NEED an online account. Which is wrong. Especially for someone who doesn’t use the internet and thusly doesn’t have it connected to his gaming computer… Plus everybody who has bad internet, like myself, will have problems with Steam… Both cases meaning we all cannot play games on Steam which can be bought as a physical disc.
I honestly wouldn’t have much of a problem if the physical disc versions of the games didn’t had that forced Steam requirement but they do so I have a problem with it.
I guess I’m just not understanding the rationale as presented. Especially the ‘third-party program’ thing.Steam has to be running if you want to play a game. I do not like the idea of that. The only thing I want running when playing a game would be the game itself.
Steam is pretty innocuous as far as DRM goes and it also brings other features into play like automated patchingActually, I don’t like that either cause it is forced. You cannot say “no” to it… At least the first time it happens when you first install a game.
Yeah, and the alternative to this is going back to other more intrusive and damaging DRM sources (some of which are ALSO ‘always-online’) because companies believe DRM needs to be a thing to succeed.I’ve never bothered into any online-related DRMs… Steam was the first online DRM that I’ve bumped into and I hate it to death.
I rather deal with using a code on the game’s manual for installation than dealing with online crap.
Also, the only thing DRM seems to succeed at is ticking people off. Otherwise, it’s pretty useless.
Please note that I hate the DRM aspect of Steam really. Not the other aspects of it.
As for the Silver account and not-being-online thing, I guess I just figured you were, well, actually using the service by virtue of listing the account here. It seems weird to me to provide an account you never use — like, I’m not providing my old GameSpy ID or anything.There’s a difference between “never” and “rarely”.
I still get on Xbox Live from time to time when I can but otherwise, I’m not online with it.
I’ve never bothered into any online-related DRMs… Steam was the first online DRM that I’ve bumped into and I hate it to death.I rather deal with using a code on the game’s manual for installation than dealing with online crap.
I have to wonder how involved in PC gaming you were in the early-to-mid-00s.
There was tons of horrible DRM. Tons. To the point where the PC market was getting hammered pretty hard and in decline. Steam was hated early on for what it did, but the marketplace and relatively light DRM infrastructure (DRM being more or less here to stay, whether we like it or not) certainly helped its image.
The simple CD-key/serial no. DRM of “a code on the game’s manual” was more or less long gone by that point anyway.
But hey, I won’t get into a history lesson.
-snip-A lot of those DRMs were much nicer since it allows more people to actually play the game after buying… But nope. People with bad, limited, or no internet at all are screwed cause of DRMs like Steam…
Like I said, I rather screw with a code or something similar than any internet related DRM.
Though honestly I would prefer having no DRM at all… Like Morrowind did. But I guess that’s never gonna happen cause of greedy people and power hungry people.
Oh and as for my PC gaming involvement. It was never that good really honestly… Then again, my involvement with gaming wasn’t that good either. (I don’t have many games).
PC wise… I had (or still have) Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Stronghold Crusaders, Stronghold Legends, The Sims Complete Collection, Halo: Combat Evolved, Minecraft, Fighting is Magic, MK3, and Black-&-White.
Only two of the games on that list had a DRM (code requirement). Two more are digital and requires to be downloaded, but still didn’t had any DRM stuff beyond that. The rest had no visible DRMs; they were just install and play.
A lot of those DRMs were much nicer since it allows more people to actually play the game after buying… […]That’s actually kind of garbage — the older (well, early-to-mid 2000s) copy protection methods were brutal, often failed to work altogether (meaning you couldn’t play the game), and were a gross inconvenience to legitimate purchasers.
Consider things like SecuROM, which have activation limits (requiring at least one online connection) and fail for various reasons like failing to detect a disc, or conflicts with other software, hardware (like, oh, your disc drive), or even your operating system settings. Or SafeDisc, which is disc-level and prevents you from making legitimate backups of your own files (SecuROM will actually generally do this too). Or StarForce, which I won’t even get into. Also, ROOTKITS EVERYWHERE AAAAAAH.
Obviously the “best” solution (other than DRM-free) for the end user is simple authentication like an off-line only CD key/serial, or even the old-fashioned “look in the manual on page x and type in the nth word”-types, but those (especially nowadays with digital documents) are the easiest to pirate, so those days are long gone and — prior to digital/online-driven services — were replaced with horrible, draconian copy protection solutions. Solutions that would cause games to not work for legitimate users. I had to pirate or install no-CD cracks for several games I purchased because the copy protection solution didn’t like my goddamn DVD drive.
A solution like Steam — with library management and its host of other features that ‘add value’ beyond just being a rights server — is certainly better than proprietary sign-ins or install limits or telephone activation or any of that trash. DRM is here, and likely here to stay, and there has yet to be a better implementation, frankly.
This is a thing. You have no internet connection and thus can’t do the 1st-time install/activation for a Steamworks title you purchased at retail? Well, that’s not a Steam-specific problem, and you would have been screwed if they’d gone with any of the other active, modern solutions to rights-management, frankly.Like I said, I rather screw with a code or something similar than any internet related DRM.Though honestly I would prefer having no DRM at all… Like Morrowind did. But I guess that’s never gonna happen cause of greedy people and power hungry people.
You’re going to have to stick to playing games from 15-20 years ago, then, or stick with indies or companies that are still doing the odd DRM-free release (I’ve purchased a few myself). To that point, here are the release dates for the software you listed in your post (and copy protection schemes, when I could find them):
- The Elder Scrolls: Arena (1994) – Look at a table (physical copy included with the game), and find the cost of a spell. You were screwed if you lost this copy, but you could at least make photocopies (digital copies would have been far less commonplace in 1994).
- Mortal Kombat III (1995) – I can’t find any info on what this would have used, if anything. There were two PC versions, iirc. I know my friend had the one that was a PlayStation port.
- The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall (1996) – Uses a disc-check, but came out before CD burners were commonplace, so didn’t really need much more than this.
- The Sims: Complete Collection (2000-2005) – SafeDisc + CD-check, iirc.
- Black & White (2001) – Couldn’t find any notes.
- Stronghold: Crusader (2001) – Uses SafeDisc/SecuROM and the different published versions use different copy-protection methods, which breaks compatibility with some patches, but mostly fire and forget.
- Halo: Comabt Evolved (2001) – Uses SafeDisc /plus/ a serial /plus/ some other custom measures (as an aside, Halo 2 went with GFWL).
- The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind (2002) – See my notes below.
- Minecraft (2009) – Indie title from a dev who is decidedly anti-DRM (and isn’t anti-piracy).
- Fighting Is Magic (2013) – Not even a commercial title, so… not really applicable, here.
So basically you’ve got a number of games over a decade old, wherein only those that are pushing fifteen years old (and from an era where CD burners were less common and certainly not very cheap) avoid any sort of aggressive copy protection beyond a key and a disc check. Then you’ve got a non-commercial game (which won’t have any protection) and an indie game from a dev who is strongly anti-DRM. Do you have much familiarity with newer copy protection schemes, honestly?
The only time I’ve ever seen a ‘simple’ fire-and-forget CD key or serial code install for a bigger game I’ve purchased in the last five years or so happened to be for retail box purchases of a couple of MMOs, which required me to create an account and be online anyway.
Morrowind did have some brutal copy protection/anti-piracy stuff in place, which mainly involved constantly accessing your disc and resulted in performance problems and SIGNIFICANT wear-and-tear on your disc/optical drive. It was patched out because of backlash because it was a terrible solution, so you might have forgotten it was a thing, but it definitely wasn’t. It wasn’t technically DRM because DRM wasn’t exactly commonplace at the time of Morrowind’s release (keep in mind Steam only came out a year afterwards and took time to take off), but it was a perfect example of the aforementioned terrible copy protection mechanisms that came into play in the era between “CD-keys and disc-checks on load” and online authentication services.
All of this being said, you’re certainly entitled to dislike Steam, but the arguments for it don’t seem to be especially rational (they don’t need to be, mind you, but the fact that they aren’t is what prompted my replies). Admittedly, if your experience is mostly relegated to stuff form over a decade ago you may not have your views/tastes tempered by the hell that was copy protection in the past ten years.
-snip-My arguments are not rational? My base arguments are all good reasons actually for me NOT to like Steam. (Forced Internet Connection, Forced Online Account Requirement, and Forced 3rd-Party-Program Requirement)… Unless I am mistaken for what is rational and what is not…
Either way. Point being, Steam does three things that I highly dislike and I find is very annoying so that is why I don’t like Steam. My opinion, like you said, and I don’t mind if others like it or not. But my reasons for disliking is as good as the reasons to like it. (Liking it for good deals, socialization, etc).
Oh and about pirating… I honestly believe the whole “pirating” battle is rather bullcrap. No matter what, there will always be a way of pirating a video game no matter what DRM is used… Ye’h, they might be able to stop some people to do it but you can’t stop them all… And you only need one person to successfully pirate something that one time. After that, it’s like a river system… The rivers are all flowing from the same source.
So yes. I find using DRMs useless anyways. To me, if you really want to battle piracy then take it to their fronts… Locate and take down their sites. That’s just my thinking on whole issue anyways and I honestly will be doing that with my own games once I started getting them released (or try to anyways. I don’t know how the whole legal department would work in that area and will need to do research on it).
My arguments are not rational? My base arguments are all good reasons actually for me NOT to like Steam. (Forced Internet Connection, Forced Online Account Requirement, and Forced 3rd-Party-Program Requirement)… Unless I am mistaken for what is rational and what is not…They’re entirely valid reasons — much like someone who insists on buying cassettes instead of CDs (because CDs skip) or MP3s (because you need to go on the internet to get them), but that doesn’t make them particularly rational (perhaps ‘logical’ would be better than rational as a term here), no, nor did your explanations/arguments (complemented by a selection of games from over a decade ago) strike me as such. You’re still entitled to that opinion, though.
It’s fine to dislike the ‘forced’ internet connection component, but most modern titles will require online activation in some capacity, and ostensibly in a far more convoluted way (like games with a limited install count) or by using ‘forced 1st-party-programs’ that have more bloat and less functionality (e.g. requiring Origin for EA titles, the now-defunct Games For Windows Live service for Microsoft titles, or uPlay for Ubisoft titles). Once activated and set for offline play, the connection is no longer ‘forced’. So I’m not sure why you find it especially problematic, other than an arbitrary ‘because’ (which, again, is fine, but isn’t a convincing gripe/argument) — if it was something like the new SimCity’s always-online DRM, you’d have a case where I would be in agreement.
It’s fine to dislike a ‘forced online account’ component, though I’m not entirely sure that applies, esp. w/ offline mode. You have to make an account, yes, but you also had to make one to post here… and, again, you only need to be online when you want to be online in both cases. So, once again, I don’t find it to be particularly convincing/compelling. SecuROM or any other online/phone activation service would put you in the same boat, and those were things before.
The only one that ‘makes sense’ to me to some extent is the disdain for third-party applications, but I still find that to be a tough one to swallow. If the in-game integration (overlay/notifications/cloud saving/whatever) bothers you, I mean, you can disable it. If it’s a performance issue, the footprint is small enough that it shouldn’t be unless you’re really scraping by the game’s specs, but I can run most of the stuff on there with no real difference in performance resulting from Steam being open or close (e.g. launching a non-Steam game that I’ve added to my Steam library) and my machine is over six years old (still on the original OS install). I don’t find it has particular bloat (like some of the other third-party tag-along pieces of software) and it has a net positive value for me. ymmv and it clearly does.
Steam is essentially a launcher/library management utility that also happens to dial in to confirm you have a licence (when you let it by leaving it in online mode) and, again, it’s a far better solution (now that they’ve worked out most of the kinks) than the other actively-used DRM/copy protection solutions of the last decade, so I struggle to agree with anyone positing it is a bad thing (other than someone who is fully opposed to any form of rights management/licencing).
Yes, some aspects suck if you have a crappy internet connection — or no connection — but if Steam didn’t exist you’d still be dealing with busted-ass rights management/copy protection solutions (with no access to patches, necessarily) or online activation schemes anyway (edit: hell, it DOES exist, and you STILL have to do this with some games and other pieces of software, esp. enterprise-level software — you would not believe the hell I went through the last few weeks trying to activate a piece of HP software at work). You’d buy a game and have it be a total lemon that you couldn’t even get a no-CD crack for, much like it was several years ago.
In an ideal world, everything would be DRM-free and nobody would pirate anything, but that’s obviously not the case. Speaking personally I’m not a fan of DRM either but Steam’s got the best implementation to date and my disdain for DRM is not enough to prevent me from buying digital — it just means I wait for the games to be dirt cheap if they aren’t DRM-free.
-snip-Eh. I guess we all understand things differently and such. There’s nothing more to add to this discussion anyways so I think we’re done.
Though I do agree with ya on one thing. Steam is a better DRM than most out there… I still hate the forced internet stuff though.
Eh. I guess we all understand things differently and such.I don’t think you could have understated it any further, bud.
I am glad I wasted time on those posts, though.
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif”>I am glad I wasted time on those posts, though.” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif” />Having a pleasant discussion with a respectable person is never wasted time… At least in my eyes.
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